The world’s top eight food cities, McDonald’s moves into the Louvre, how to carve the perfect turkey

Will shamrock shakes change the Louvre? Unsurprisingly, the French say yes (Photo by Kevin Steele)

• In a clash of cultures, McDonald’s plans to open a restaurant and a McCafé at the Louvre next month. One curmudgeonly art historian working at the famous museum deemed it “the pinnacle of exhausting consumerism, deficient gastronomy and very unpleasant odours.” In a statement sure to make any Yankee’s heart swell with pride, the Louvre said the McDonald’s would represent the American segment of a new food court featuring other world cuisines. No word yet if Harvey’s will represent Canada. [Telegraph]

• Barcelona tops the list of San Francisco Weekly’s top eight foodie destinations in the world. Other highlights include Marrakech, where one can dine on a vast array of couscous varieties and kebabs, and New Orleans, famous for its revelatory gumbo and jumbalaya. The closest the list gets to Canada? New York City. [San Francisco Weekly]

• Gluttons for punishment may want to check out a Gawker photo gallery that shows the offices of Gourmet looking eerily, tragically abandoned. Be forewarned: seeing the empty cubicles really hammers home the poignancy of the magazine’s sudden closure in a way that quotes and statistics in the news can’t quite capture. [Gawker]

• In hopes of inspiring people to put more thought into what they eat, New York City tested a new law requiring restaurant chains to list calorie counts on their menus. Well, the results are in. The law doesn’t provide any noticeable benefit, plus consumers actually increased their caloric consumption. To the surprise of the NYU and Yale profs that studied the effects of the regulation, customer orders averaged around 825 calories before the law went into effect, and 846 calories after. [New York Times]

• A botched carving job is a sure-fire way to detract from a perfectly roasted turkey. Just in time for this weekend’s Thanksgiving eat-a-thons, the Globe provides step-by-step instructions on how to carve the bird, complete with graphics. [Globe and Mail]